NPR Segment Features Independent Booksellers' Holiday Picks

When does a 300-square-foot bookstore have enough space to encompass millions of book buyers and thousands of books? Answer: When National Public Radio's Susan Stamberg asks its manager to recommend some holiday gift books and the response is aired on the popular Morning Edition radio program. On December 4, three independent bookstores were represented during the radio segment titled "The Hunt for Books That Are Better to Give."

Tiny Portrait of a Bookstore in Studio City, California, was joined by The Book Mark in Atlantic Beach, Florida, and Changing Hands in Tempe, Arizona, during the feature, which was aired on NPR stations across the country.

Rona Brinlee, who owns the Book Mark with her husband, Buford, was "absolutely thrilled" to be interviewed by Stamberg for the program. She told BTW that "NPR is our market. Our customers take those recommendations very seriously. The customers are thrilled to hear our little store mentioned on the radio, the publishers are happy, and the authors are delighted. We've gotten calls and letters from several of them and e-mails from all around the country."

Brinlee recommended four books and had time to comment on two of them. First was The Book Lover's Cookbook by Shaunda Kennedy Wenger and Janet Kay Jensen (Ballantine) of which Brinlee said, "I'm a terrible cook and this makes a great gift. The recipes are all from literature: flapjacks from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Catch 'Em to Eat 'Em Chicken and Dumplings from Fried Green Tomatoes. It's filled with quotes about reading and writing so it's really for book lovers, not necessarily cooks."

Brinlee continued, "I also talked about When It Was Our War: A Soldier's Wife on the Home Front by Stella Suberman (Algonquin Books). It's a wonderful book; it evokes the time so well. I think it's like the 'greatest generation' for women -- what they were doing during World War II.

"There wasn't time for me to talk about Empire of Light (by David Czuchlewski, Putnam), and I had spent a lot of time learning to pronounce his name," said Brinlee of her third recommendation, and her fourth pick was a children's book, On Noah's Ark, by Jan Brett (Putnam).

Lucia Silva, who manages Portrait of a Bookstore in the colorful Tujunga Village section of Studio City, explained that she wanted to use her few minutes on the radio to talk about books that "[she gives] as gifts all the time, especially at Christmas -- books that you wouldn't find in the big stacks at the chain stores. I love books that you can read all in one sitting or in one day." Silva's first pick was E.B. White's slim, nostalgic Here Is New York (Little Bookroom). Why a book about New York selected by a bookstore on the opposing coast? "I love that book so much -- not so much because it's about New York, but [because] it captures the elusive feelings that special places evoke," Silva commented. "It's also a timely book -- it has some haunting allusions. There are good parts [of New York City] and scary parts about being such a concentrated metropolis."

Could Here Is New York be a useful preamble for those coming to the Big Apple as delegates to the Republican National Convention in 2004? "I think it should be necessary, required reading to accompany their guidebooks," Silva laughed. Her other picks included A Christmas Memory, One Christmas, & The Thanksgiving Visitor by Truman Capote (Modern Library), Cindy Sherman: The Complete Untitled Film Stills by Cindy Sherman (Museum of Modern Art), and Zoom by Istvan Banyai (Puffin).

Silva continued, "The Cindy Sherman book is made up of film stills from when she was quite young. They're all faked -- she only photographs herself. She turns the concept of film as a slice of reality on its head.

"Zoom is just one of the best books I've ever seen. It's a completely pictoral narrative, photographic in concept. The illustrations gradually zoom out in perspective -- it can be read backwards too -- then it zooms in. Every adult and child who sees it is fascinated by it."

From Tempe, Arizona, Gayle Shanks of Changing Hands said that she was excited about her conversation with the esteemed Ms. Stamberg. "I've even spoken with her before, and I've done many book chats on air but something about being on NPR made me very nervous," Shanks told BTW. "I was speaking to the reading public and to my peers. I was suddenly tongue-tied."

Stamberg's reassuring interview style and "skillful editing" made Shanks very pleased with the result. Shanks concluded that she must have done something right because, she said, "The fallout was incredible. Customers are falling all over themselves to get in the store and tell the staff that they heard me on NPR. It's great for them when their local bookstore is chosen. Someone who heard the piece called from Colorado and bought $100 worth of gift certificates. Customers asked for books that other booksellers mentioned because they thought I did. That's great too."

Shanks talked about Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi (Random House), A Kind of Flying: Selected Stories by local author and Arizona State University professor Ron Carlson (Norton), Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear (Soho Press), and the children's book Clorinda by Robert Kinerk, illustrated by Steven Kellogg (S&S).

"Jacqueline Winspear actually called me at the store to thank me for recommending her book. She left the sweetest voice-mail message, I think, from England," Shanks said. "I was so jazzed about all those books and wanted to present books that people might not know about." --Nomi Schwartz